The nun
*ing: Demián Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet
Rated: 4/10
After the two Conjurings from where this third one with a different name emanates, the nun, haunted or otherwise, fails to fulfill its basic job — to scare the night lights and the daylights out of you.
Yes, the Romanian castle sitting over a gentle mound just off a remote village is visually perfect for a horror movie and the dark, eerie cloistered convent where the evil sits all blood and fury, evokes the only tinges of feat that come to you throughout the movie. Other than that, it’s pretty much a blood-smeared, veiled skeletal nun with a man’s voice and evil intentions gliding through the entire film but without doing much to show its devilish side in action.
There’s a nun who is yet to be one, a Father who is used by The Vatican more as a sleuth than as a man of God, a love interest and a whole lot of cloistered nuns who actually may not be there for real. Then there are these usual suspects — the graves, the dark woods, the hanging crosses and of, course, dead people rising from the graves to stoke the worst fears of the protagonists.
All this should have curated fear in a manner that should not have depended on 4D effects. And if fear, genuine, screaming and staccato kind of fear is missing, The Nun possessed is hardly likely to be missed. While the movie may not be based on true events, the demon that possesses is real. But even that fails to give it the desired premise mainly because the proceedings have been kept strangely undertoned and linear.
Better evil next time!
